CBS Digital

01/04/2018

CBS Digital: Intro to VR

A look into CBS Digital's journey from VFX to VR and virtual sets. Shot at CBS Digital on the historic CBS Television City lot during the summer of 2017. Special thanks to April Robinson and Daryl Obert of Autodesk, and Eugene Riecanksy (director), Stewart Addison (camera) and Taylor Ross of Rockstar Films for another great piece!

01/04/2018

CBS Digital Pipeline: Autodesk

A look at CBS Digital's VFX pipeline, featuring Audtodesk products. Shot at CBS Digital on the historic CBS Television City lot during the summer of 2017. Special thanks to April Robinson and Daryl Obert of Autodesk, as well as Eugene Riecanksy (director), Stewart Addison (camera) and Taylor Ross of Rockstar Films for creating such a great piece!

08/04/2017

CBS Digital's cover photo

07/21/2017

SDCC 2017: Stranger Things' VR Is A Whole Other Level On HTC Vive

The CBS Digital team continues exhibition of our compact HTV Vive version of our Stranger Things VR Experience at Comic-Con 2017. We are at the Hilton Gaslamp Quarter, in the Corona Room off the Terrace today, 11am - 8pm, Saturday, 7/22, 11am - 8pm and Sunday, 7/23 from 11am - 3pm. If you're at CC, stop by and check us out! Season 2 of Stranger Things drops on Friday, 10/27 on Netflix. We can't wait for the new season!

We went through the Emmy-nominated Stranger Things VR experience on the HTC Vive at SDCC 2017 and came away very impressed.

07/18/2017

CBS Digital’s visual effects creative team has entered the race for an Emmy Award. Executive Creative Director, Craig Weiss and Executive producer, George Bloom, elaborated on the collaboration with Netflix. The Stranger Things Virtual Reality experience had one key mission. It was to create an interactive media faithful to the show. Our vision was to weave the narrative of Joyce Byers empathetic role so the user assumes her struggle to find her son.

The challenge was to design an experience beyond anything that could be achieved from off the shelf VR and make it scalable to other platforms. We laser scanned the actual house in Atlanta which allowed us to build an exact replica in 3-dimensional space. This allowed participants to walk unobstructed through the Joyce’s home.

We used optical tracking so participants could use their own hands and interact with real objects in the virtual world. This interactive dimension added realism by allowing users to explore the home with a flashlight and answer a real telephone. The immersive experience had a story arc with a climatic ending. All users experienced the same unanimous surprise. Every person had an unforgettable memory into the world of Stranger Things.

Netflix deployed the VR experience at publicity stunts domestically and internationally. From development to completion, the production period was four months. A behind the scenes video of the cast experiencing it for the first time garnered over 1 million views. There was added buzz from social media and more VR versions were launched onto: YouTube 360, Gear VR and Google Cardboard.

This memorable interactive media gave people a unique opportunity to participate in the story world of Stranger Things. You can watch some of the Stranger Things cast going through the experience here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqW4l9Y5cXY

06/14/2017

06/14/2017

For Your Consideration: CBS Digital's Enhanced VR Experience for the Netflix Original Series, Stranger Things. Category #44, Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media.